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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23211886">pain</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoaa1/pseuds/novoaa1'>novoaa1</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dom/sub Undertones, F/F, Healing, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Kind of a character study, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, POV Natasha Romanov, Submission</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:53:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>888</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23211886</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/novoaa1/pseuds/novoaa1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It didn’t hurt like the others, submitting for Pepper.</p><p>In fact, it didn’t hurt at all.</p><p>Or: Natasha has some things to learn about what it truly means to be submissive. Somewhere along the way, she finds Pepper.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Clint Barton &amp; Natasha Romanov, Pepper Potts/Natasha Romanov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>pain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>you know the drill kiddos</p><p>did i proofread? no</p><p>am i going to? unclear</p><p>is this probably even more of a mess than usual since it feels like forever since i've written something? 100%</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Natasha has never considered submission all that delicate a convention; if anything, she quite firmly believes it to be the opposite: a measure of just how much brutality one can handle at the complete mercy of someone stronger, more powerful… the antithesis of fragility, by any and all means.  </p><p> </p><p>	It’s violence, even if a rather peculiar strain of it—it’s bruised flesh and broken skin and <em>pain</em> beyond your bounds, because perhaps you are big but they are bigger and consequently, you are lesser. </p><p> </p><p>	And, in some cases, it only lasts for brief period; in some cases, you are only lesser for a moment or two, because sexual submission is not equivalent unto unconditional meekness all across the board—there’s a certain duality interwoven generously throughout the complex nature of sexual submission, one Natasha often likes to think is roughly correspondent unto some undeniable measure of quiet strength (albeit a morbid one, at that), because it takes a special breed of resilience to play the part of another’s equal while still bearing the angry marks of their unbridled savagery upon your skin, and Natasha will swear by that until her final breath. </p><p> </p><p>	She doesn’t believe in much, but, that? She’ll never let it leave her. </p><p> </p><p>— — </p><p> </p><p>	Meeting Pepper was like a 5-minute drizzle beneath sunlit clouds followed by a translucent rainbow that stretched beautifully across the heavens—"liquid sunshine" as they called it in Hawai’i, where she and Clint met every six months like clockwork at their safe house on the sun-kissed isle of Oahu to check in. </p><p> </p><p>	Developing an admittedly unprofessional interest in her during Natalie Rushman’s short stint at Stark Industries was like true rainfall upon her skin and barely-there sunlight straining to reach from behind stormy-grey clouds, the kind that soaked her clothes and plonked audibly against the pavement and smelled so strongly of dewdrops and morning. </p><p> </p><p>	But, falling for her? God. Falling for her was like a downpour, the kind you only hear about in stories, the kind that floods the streets and resurrects long-dead herbage and cleanses the earth of any wrongdoing, any trace of the depravity that once was. </p><p> </p><p>	Perhaps it’s fitting, then, because Pepper was like a force of nature; soft and tenderhearted yet firm and unyielding, gentle and loving yet stern and unyielding, all in the same breadth, the same fragile slender being. </p><p> </p><p>	Not only that, she was different from the rest, different in such a way that even Natasha herself could not quite rationalize:</p><p> </p><p>	She remembers the first time they were intimate, on a brisk and gloomy day in the third week of January. Half-melted snow graced the pavements, glistening frost painted the tips of the once lush-green grass an alluring pearly white, various stray red-and-green bows and miscellaneous decorative ornaments leftover from Christmas and New Year’s littered the bustling streets… it was repugnant and yet somehow charming, Natasha remembers thinking, in a way only the unapologetically American metropolis of New York City ever could manage to be. </p><p> </p><p>(God, she truly was becoming distastefully soft.)</p><p> </p><p>	Natasha and Pepper were laid up in the latter’s rather lavish penthouse, well into their second bottle of Chardonnay, exchanging witty quips and tipsy half-remembrances into the night as the City raged on down below. Natalie Rushman was<br/>
(thankfully) but a mere memory unto them both, Natasha’s true nature having long since been revealed in light of the Avengers initiative and the rather melodramatic (attempted) alien invasion of New York; no, things were blessedly simple in that moment, Natasha recalls—almost perfect, she thinks (or, as close to perfect as she’ll ever get). </p><p> </p><p>	There’d always been a certain air to their dynamic (one Natasha was beyond certain they both felt), a sort of tension (no doubt one indicative of some unspoken attraction) between the two of them—it was there in the way Pepper’s ocean-blue eyes would linger for just a millisecond too long upon the swell of Natasha’s red-painted lips when she spoke, the way her gaze would dart hastily back up to Natasha’s face whenever Natasha turned her back for a second or two only to spin right back around, the way the older woman's breath hitched audibly in her throat whenever Natasha decided to test the waters by bending at the waist in such a way that bordered on unprofessional in order to retrieve something she’d “mistakenly” dropped well within Pepper’s periphery. </p><p> </p><p>	Yes, Pepper had always wanted her from the moment she stepped foot in Stark Industries for the very first time under the Americanized moniker of Natalie Rushman, if not for her charisma (that which she had not yet been permitted to see) then for her taut curved body and conventionally attractive looks; Natasha had known this since the beginning, had always kept it tucked away in the back of her mind should she ever have the need to exploit that particular persuasion in an effort to complete her mission at the time.</p><p> </p><p>	She wasn’t on a mission any longer, that night—in fact, she hadn’t been for a short while. </p><p> </p><p>	That night, she didn’t belong to S.H.I.E.L.D., or Phil, or Fury. </p><p> </p><p>	That night, she didn’t belong to anyone but herself… and <strike>perhaps</strike> one Pepper Potts. </p><p> </p><p>	Most notably of all: it didn’t hurt like the others, submitting for Pepper.</p><p> </p><p>	In fact, it didn’t hurt at all.</p><p> </p><p>— —</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thots? (my <a href="https://psyches.co.vu/">tumblr</a> or just search @ultralightdumbass to come talk to me there!)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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